Using Multiple Datapoints

One datapoint is the US census puts 3,000 as a number (for no. of Singaporeans in California - so if you split evenly between NorCal and SoCal, that's 1,500 here.)

Another possible data point is Singapore Day (in SF) 2016 attendance which was past 2,000. But these could include those who came over for the event (so not living in the SF Bay Area).

It feels at least 1,000. Another authority once gave a figure, Dr Vivian said 1200 once at a talk. Some feel it is at least 3,000-4,000 but they aren't active:

So at a minimum 1000. Some think the number is higher - closer to 3-4k born in Singapore folks who are studying and working here (eg Big 4 accounting /management consulting firms alone have a few hundreds - based on just one company’s social group), or are so well assimilated into Silicon Valley they don’t stick out as Singaporeans. In addition, even though our Bay Area Whatsapp groups collectively may add to 1,500, each name may represent a couple or family. We also know we keep meeting “born in Singapore” folks who claim to have never encountered other Singaporeans or SingaporeConnect before - as they prefer to remain “under the radar” for various reasons.

Many Singaporean households have non-Singaporean members

Bear in mind many Singaporean families have non-Singaporean family members. For example one spouse and two children. Or those who are ex-Singaporean. It’s about 60:40 Singaporean: non-Singaporean at typical SingaporeConnect events. You will also see a fraction at National Day events as whenever the et were held in person they maxed out at 350-450 (ballroom capacity).

Proxy Numbers from Community Groups and Large Events

Sum of all those in Bay Area WhatsApp group is 1000 (and they may have more Singaporean members in their households, but then also some members are non-Singaporeans). Definitely must note the household vs total caveat and then bias by the foreign/Singaporean mix for a typical household.

Another datapoint is the US govt (census, cited by some SG officials I recall) has at least 10000 as the number of Singaporeans in the US. So if you assume 30% in the Bay Area?

1) SingaporeConnect email group size

311 members

For joining the email group, members have to apply. We typically approve, though, since today, relatively few people ask to receive emails, compared to other means.

We’ve tended to “reset” this every few years, asking everyone to re-register, and this tends to weed out those who aren’t interested to receive emails any more. The peak I think used to be as high as 450 before we did a “reset”.

2) SingaporeConnect Facebook page size and group size

private (closed) group = 2,100 members

page = 972 followers, 802 likes

For our group, members have to pass a questionnaire to be accepted. They are asked their location and whether they agree to some rules. We don’t have a way of saving this location data, but I’ll guess about 20% of those in the group aren’t in the Bay Area.

For our page, there is no such mechanism, so it is what it is.

3) Attendance at larger events

Some possible larger events to derive an idea:

1. Singapore Community Day 2015: SGC organised: 700 attendees. Attendees had to be Singaporean, but could bring along their immediate family (kids and spouse) I do have detailed data on this. I’ll say about 450+ were Singaporeans. 2015 is a while ago already though.
2. National Day Events by the Consulate-General. These are held annually, till 2019. Typically sold out. They require attendees to be Singaporean, but they can bring along their immediate family. The last time I’ve talked to the Consulate, it seems they can accommodate about 350. It does feel crowded inside, and at least 250 people on the ones I’ve attended. In-person was pre-pandemic, of course.
3. Singapore Day 2016. This was organised by the Overseas Singaporean Unit. You’ve seen them in New York City as well. 2016 was the first one in the SF Bay Area, SF itself. You have to ask OSU/SGN for numbers, but I vaguely recall it was about 2,000. They will attract folks from outside the Bay Area, of course. I think they were stricter about attendees, you could bring in one non-Singaporean for each attendee.
4. SingaporeConnect National Day Event. We had a virtual event in 2020 and a hybrid (physical and online) event in 2021. We did take down citizenship data, per SGN requirements. We had ~ 350 attendees in 2020 and ~786 in 2021. Those were numbers we reported to SGN based on the registration (names and citizenship) Counting attendees is very tricky with virtual - you could have a person calling in on behalf of the whole family. We definitely had attendees outside the Bay Area, I can find numbers, it’s probably 90% in the Bay Area in 2020 and 75% in 2021..

It’s about 60-70% Singaporean on the attendees.

Our other events (i.e. Lunar New Year) have smaller attendance, so I think ND is a better proxy.

4) US Census

When we’ve seen “number of Singaporeans in the US” reported in the media, where they ask the Singapore Embassy, they have we think once cited numbers from the US State Dept or US Census.

The US Census was held in 2010 and 2020. They have two types of questionnaires, one for everyone, and a detailed one. The detailed one asks about ones citizenship. Interestingly, we can go to their web site and create a report for number of Singaporeans in the US, for 2010, but we have yet to be able to do this for 2020. We can do it for say people from Philippines for 2020. I suspect due to the pandemic, they were unable to do as many detailed questionnaires, and do not have sufficient data for 2020 to really attempt to extrapolate the number of Singaporeans in the US from the sample size for the detailed questionnaire.

The 2010 one listed about 10,000 Singaporeans, of which about 3,000 were in the California area. If you’re interested, you can go to the US Census web site and construct the query.

5) WhatsApp groups for Bay Area residents

WhatsApp group sizes:

East Bay: 276

SF: 363

South Bay: 415

(Assume other groups like SG Foodies, Peninsula, Cupertino, are subsets of these)

Total: 1054

The number is less accurate today because people tend to join multiple groups. The current size of the Community Group across all groups is 1,514 (2025). If you want true Singaporeans you’ll have to pro-rate that, not sure we’ll use the 60% metric, maybe 80-90%?

So call it ~ 1,200.

Note this ST article from 2019:

- Singapore Connect, a social group for Singaporeans in the Bay Area, has around 1,000 members.

- At least 1,200 Singaporeans working in the Silicon Valley area.

‍https://www.straitstimes.com/politics/sporeans-in-bay-area-urged-to-consider-opportunities-back-home

This was probably a swag based on every thing, our email list is clearly not representative of all members, Facebook is better, but 1800 is too many, so 1000 feels about right as an answer to “1 significant digit".

And not everyone who is Singaporean is a member, obviously, so maybe 1200. I think that’s bordering on the high-end, but well, I can be very sure it’s not, say, 10000, and certainly more than 100. So we’re in the 500 for sure, to 1,000 probably, to unlikely > 2,000.

Is this increasing or decreasing?

Some wonder if the number of Singaporeans has been decreasing since 2019 / 2020 due to the pandemic.

We’ve also had shop-talk about this, and we think no. The reason is there are a number of home-based chefs emerging to sell Singapore/Malaysia type food, and these have to charge what it costs to produce, which is not really that inexpensive. So basically, they have to sell to Singaporeans who are nostalgic for the food. If they are able to exist, and sell out, there must be a captive audience. And this has been growing substantially. The WhatsApp groups have also been growing. So we think while some people have left and gone back, when we see “leaves” vs “arrives” based on group adds, it feels like there is a net “add” still.

(We can get some data on “leaves” because for our SingaporeConnect Forum that we did online from 2020 - 2021, we had a pre-forum survey where we asked people if they had decided to leave because of Covid, and it was in the ~ 5%-10% region per Forum, can’t really say it ties to an absolute number, but it may be in the 10s of people per year? Probably doesn’t offset what appears to be 10s+ who are joining per year).

Overall, it feels like it's increasing.

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